‘Taming the Populists’ with Waffle

Note: This post is a response to an opinion piece by Javier Solana. Since it’s a response, if you don’t want to waste your time you’ll have to read the original article first.

I’m getting sick of this waffle.

Solana may have finally grasped the problem – but that’s hardly grounds for congratulations. After all, hundreds of millions of ordinary, struggling people supporting Trump, Corbyn, Wilders, Sanders, Le Pen, Iglesias, Ukip, Syriza, the Austrian Freedom Party and all the other radical challengers to the system figured that out years ago when they had a problem paying the rent or insuring the car. Welcome to obvious, practical economic reality, Mr. Solana!

Former EU High Representative for Foreign and Security Policy, Secretary-General of NATO, and Foreign Minister of Spain, and currently President of the ESADE Center for Global Economy and Geopolitics, Distinguished Fellow at the Brookings Institution, and a member of the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council on Europe, and waffler, the “Most Excellent” Javier Solana.

You’d wonder why somebody as clearly smart as Solana can be so emotionally and empathetically dumb. I guess that’s what comes of having more money than you could ever morally need for most of your live, and having yourself and your family assured of economic security. Meanwhile, back in the real world with the rest of us, the electricity bill is due… No wonder they just don’t get it.

And look at his solutions: “Bold initiatives to tackle inequality”, “stopgap measures”, better and smarter education and training, “improve global governance” and, of course, the admonition that “leaders must ensure that discussion is translated into real action”.

What a crock of nonsense! What a weasly, vague, wishy-washy, meaningless list of nonsense! No wonder people despise politicians who come out with drivel like this. Oh, it sounds great – it all sounds wonderful! But the problem is that it doesn’t actually MEAN anything at all. What do the words “bold”, “better”, “improve”, “ensure” and “real action” actually mean? There’s nothing specific, nothing explicit, nothing defined, nothing precise, nothing clear and nothing real about whatever it is he’s talking about. What, exactly is he proposing? What, specifically, is he suggesting? Where can I find a link to the text of the law that he’s seeking to implement?

Nowhere, that’s where. This is all called ‘waffle’.

And it’s not even very good waffle. Does he really think that redundant factory workers, Uber drivers, Amazon packers, fast food servers and all the many millions of others struggling near or below the median income – does he really think that they’re all going to brush up on their math skills and get jobs writing code for Google? Do we all have to be high-tech entrepreneurs now? Is that it? What a crock!

And what are these “stopgap measures”? I’ll tell you what they are. Sometimes you’re forced by circumstances to do the right thing, but you don’t want to do it, and so you keep reminding everyone that it’s only temporary. QE is a ‘stopgap measure’, for example. Whatever Solana’s “stopgap” measures” are (and like I said, it’s all waffle), he doesn’t want you to think they might be permanent. After all, we don’t want real change, do we.

And don’t get me started about his idea that huge sections of the population have to be “tamed”!